Monday, November 26, 2007

First products

On Wednesday, November 14th, I completed an eight-week session of meetings with about ten students, nearly all of whom were boys, and who worked with partners in the creation of a 2-3 slide contribution to the Keynote siddur. One group created slides for the blessing in the amidah about healing; another group created slides for the blessings about peace; and two groups offered different perspectives on the blessing about knowledge. I suspect it came in response to the academic pressures mounting as we neared the end of the trimester!

My partner and I in this project joins me in our excitement as we see the students feeling a connection to the siddur as they transform it into a series of texts and images, and we also are excited about their skill development, now that they are inserting Hebrew texts into their Keynote (and sometimes Power Point) presentations. Once they see the siddur projected on to the SMARTBoard, they become excited about how their work fits in with the work of others.

I am beginning with a new group of ten students, some of whom are concentrating their attention on the amidah, and some of whom are concentrating their attention on the blessings around the Shema.